


Letting All Sorrows Drown

by Saquira



Series: The Pillars of Albion [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Backstory, Female Merlin, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 09:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12166239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saquira/pseuds/Saquira
Summary: He also drinks at every bar and tavern he finds. He drinks, flirts with the barmaid and antagonises anyone who’s bigger than he is. (Gwaine’s tall but skinny, more handsome with every day that passes but doesn’t have much meat on his bones yet. His strength’s still wiry and he hasn’t wrestled much since he left home.) There’s plenty of people bigger than he is.





	1. 690 AD

**Author's Note:**

> Gwaine's 17 when he leaves home.

**690 AD**

Gwaine has no set goal when he leaves his mothers house except the desire to leave his family’s kingdom. He takes his father’s sword and a couple of days worth of food, but leaves anything else of value for his mother and sister.

He takes short jobs on the road. Escorts a few traders here, goes after a small group of inexperienced bandits there. Once he even spends a couple of months in a village and helps bring in the harvest.

He also drinks at every bar and tavern he finds. He drinks, flirts with the barmaid and antagonises anyone who’s bigger than he is. (Gwaine’s tall but skinny, more handsome with every day that passes but doesn’t have much meat on his bones yet. His strength’s still wiry and he hasn’t wrestled much since he left home.) There’s plenty of people bigger than he is. How it starts may always be the same, but how it ends always varies. Sometimes he gets in bed with a pretty girl, sometimes he goes to bed alone, sometimes there’s shattered clay, spilled alcohol and a lot of drunk men beating on each other.

But his father taught him to fight as a knight, and then he taught him to fight as a commoner. It’s easier than he thought to adapt both into the skills needed to survive a bar-fight.

Away from his father’s grave and his mother’s grief, away from his grandfather and his uncles (away from Bernicia), Gwaine is little more than a sell-sword with a too big mouth who’s just charming enough for the ladies to think him funny.


	2. Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The eldest princess falls in love with one of her father’s most loyal knights. They steal away in the dead of night before her betrothal to Northumbria’s crown prince has yet to be made official, and the ceremony is both quiet and quick so that no one shall have the opportunity to stop them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm making use of this map for the geography of Albion & Camelot, though the rulers in Pillars don't correspond with it;  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/1037453/chapters/2069264

**Past**

King Lot of Bernicia is young when he marries his Anna. She’s a southern lady, in the sense that she’s from further south than Elmet and somewhere in her family tree there’s a roman from whom she got her beautiful light brown eyes. They marry for love and promise their first daughter to the swaddling son of Northumbria’s king. (Perhaps that is their mistake, promising their first when it is only their second who agrees to marry for duty.)

Their first child and daughter is named Clarissant. She has her mothers eyes and her fathers fair hair, and just as much passion as the both of them combined.

Next comes two sons. Gaheris and Gareth are only half an hour apart when they come screaming into the world, and had they grown up to be any but who they are their father might have worried about succession. But Gaheris is the perfect heir and Gareth thinks of little else but duty.

Soredamor is born three and a half years after her older sister and two years after her brothers. She is as dutiful as Clarissant is wilful, and though she loves her elder sister above anything she can never understand her choices.

Bruin comes many years after his youngest sister, when the queen has lost any hope of another child, and by the time he’s old enough to understand duty and honour Clarissant has already chosen love over family.

The eldest princess falls in love with one of her father’s most loyal knights. They steal away in the dead of night before her betrothal to Northumbria’s crown prince has yet to be made official, and the ceremony is both quiet and quick so that no one shall have the opportunity to stop them.

When her family learns what she’s done, when their marriage is brought into the light of day, she refuses to have it revoked. In return the king disowns his oldest daughter. Though her new husband gets to keep his status, he loses face and trust in court and Clarissant has to start working to put food on the table.


End file.
